That kind of childishly simple logic has been disproven so many times. There is nothing to support this argument, except industry lawyers who have only their own interests at heart.

If it is quicker and cheaper to purchase content, that's what people do. If it is easier and faster to use P2P, ditto.

The recording and movie industries have completely and utterly failed to take advantage of ways of making it easier for people to get and pay for content. Instead, they are trying to make it harder and harder, pretending that the consumer wants limitations imposed on them.

Watching the death throes of these industries, as they lash out in court and try to bring a tiny handful of copyright infringers down with them, is real comedy.

Which in turn has brought up another argument for the p2p piracy thing - is art considered 'payable' anymore?

Surveys have indicated that many people believe that music is not worth paying for in the sense it has no monetary value - music is art in the public domain.

Obviously film is not the same here, but once you start many people find the jump from music to film not so hard.

So I ask - how many people here actually feel that music is worthwhile paying for? And by this I mean if you felt the price was reasonable would you pay it? I am not asking you to name the price, but if it was reasonable.

As an example, I recently took the option of taking the $5USD for the new NIN album in Apple Lossless AAC to get the other 3 discs despite disc 1 being free (as in torrent free) available.

If BitTorrent didn't exist and the film could not be sourced from anywhere else... you would find that most of those 10,000 people would probably go out and at least rent the DVD... some would buy it.

Lactose intolerant people don't buy milk, and they don't steal it either.

There's also another excuse I hate: "It's a crap movie/album... they shouldn't charge that much for it - so I just downloaded it for free". If it is crap, why do you want it? Even for free?

If someone does something that I want to reap the benefit of/enjoy, and they have set a price for that work... I decide whether I think the price is what I want to pay for what I get... If so, I buy it. If not, I do without.

Absolutely;

I also bought the new NIN album online for $5US. That same record will be released in Australia for $39.99, of which (traditionally), the artist would be exceptionally lucky to see anywhere near $5 of it.

I would rather support an artist by paying to see them live at a venue, and purchasing their t-shirt/hoodie/badges etc

The music industry missed the boat a long, long time ago, and rather than evolve with the times, has chosen to slowly march into the tar pits.

Or they would go back to doing what they did before and tape it of the radio.

if the price gouging, profiteering pirates of the recording industry woke up to the reality they would move to an electronic model of distribution, rewrite the concept of copyright and accept a much more modest profit margin.

if they did this most would be prepared to pay a fair price i reckon. i know i never had an issue paying the russian mafia a couple of dollars for albums on allofmp3.

like most people who breach copyright, i would never have paid the obscene prices the recording industry demanded for music and video content - my music library would be a fraction of the size it is now as would be my video library. its a nonsense to suggest people would have paid full price for the content if they were unable to pirate it and translate that into lost profits.

especially where the money ends up with the artist in any significant form, i have been happy to pay a reasonable amount to the artist, NIN and Radiohead are 2 artists i have supported in this way.

having worked in the industry i know what a pittance those profiteering pirates pass on to the artist, i will not pay $15 + for an album or $20 + for a DVD when all i am buying is the digital version online. until the industry adapts i will get it for free, otherwise i will pay a fair and reasonable anount where that model is available.

Doubtful, they'd just burn it onto dvd's or put it on a portable HDD and hand around 300Gb of it at a time.

Music copying is nothing new, bitorrenting just happens to be an incredibely efficient way of doing it.

While I understand Japan doing that, I wonder if many people feel the way I do. I want to be able to legally purchase and download music, movies and TV Shows. It would be nice to be able to preview them too.

Unfortunately the Studio's work so hard to make this difficult and to get their cut, that they lose sales, to BT and because in my case it's harder than it should be.

For example, The Office US was never available on Australia ITMS and now it's been pulled off the US one as well. I have had to buy it on DVD from the US because you can't get season 3 and 4 in Australia. BUT it shouldn't be that hard. Give me the ability to download it legally and I will happily do that and pay for it.

I'm not blaming Apple, I just don't know why Studios don't understand people want easy and/or simple access to content. I know there are no technological hurdles.

Regarding BT, I have 2 friends who download many TV shows over BT simply because they can't get them here. Personally, I don't use BT because my conscience struggles with it, but I don't blame them because we simply don't get these shows here, or if we do they only show half the season, or it's delayed, or they change the timeslot.

Bring on ABC's playback, I hope I'm accepted in the first Beta.

As I specified in my post, "if BitTorrent didn't exist, and the film could not be sourced from anywhere else".

I simply do not understand why people downloading media for free think they have the right to do so, and how they came to the conclusion that the producer/provider of the media is not entitled to set a price for it or receive money for it. If you don't think it's value for money... DON'T BUY IT!

Excuse #3: "The artist hardly sees any money from the cost of the album, I'd rather download it for free than support the evil record labels"... hang on a second - now no-one is getting any money! And the artist entered into a contract with the label. That's their problem. Not mine.

While I totally agree with your argument, the issue is that there isn't a new model for forward thinking artists. iTunes Plus is the closest thing to perfect distribution at the moment and I can't think of any way to make it better.

Make sure you don't punish artists trying to do the right thing while you're punishing the major labels.

Agreed. Artists are getting smarter these days too... deals like that aren't as common. A lot of smart artists are seeking distribution and promo on a per album basis, rather than signing to a label for a massive, restricted contract.

Case in point: guys like Gotye

I totally agree that 1 pirated copy does not equal 1 lost sale.

... as long as they agree that using P2P to download pirated content is illegal and they might end up in jail or punished for doing so.

That's where we don't see eye to eye. I do support the artist, but in other ways, as I explained above.

I don't support an industry that is hostile, old fashioned and treats it's customer base as ignorant fools and criminals.

The reason why so many people think they have a right to consume other people's intellectual property is because they have never created anything of value themselves.

The excuse of blaming the record industry corporations is also misguided. Downloaders seem to be of the impression these record labels somehow force the artists into a pittling contract, jack up the price of CDs/DVDs and wait for the profits to roll in - therefore, they can download guilt free because they aren't failing to reward the honest artist, but a faceless giant corporation.

Firstly, the artist would only enter into the contract if it was the best option for them. If they think they can make more money going independent or the NIN route, they would have. But the truth is that the record companies do a lot for the artist, taking the risk of paying them, promoting, marketing and distributing their content. If the artist makes 3% off the CD sales, that isn't exploitation - that's the market telling the artist: 'sure, you can sing, but there are 100,000 other people who can sing and want to sell music too, and there simply aren't enough consumers of music out there to demand paying for all of you.'

Secondly, if the job of the record companies was that easy - just sitting back and profiting off the real work put in by the artists - then every kid and their mother would be in the recording industry business. If that's all you have to do, then no one would be doing anything else - just working for the record industry where you exploit the artist and exploit the consumer and make billions of profit by making sure copyright law is enforced.

And it's perfectly legal to buy stuff at concerts... but if you are saying that justifies downloading that artists albums for free because you did that, I don't agree.

Generally, the artist has entered into a contract with a label that gives the label the right to solely distribute that artists music. In return, the label gives the artist access to professional recording studios, audio engineers, etc and looks after packaging (including artists for album covers), shipping, marketing, radio play, TV appearances, organising tours and venues etc...

If the CD was the only format you could procure the music on (forgetting recording off the radio, BitTorrent, etc) - would you think that buying a few t-shirts and stickers at the band's concert would justify your walking into JB Hi-fi and simply taking that artist's latest album off the shelf?

Just because the copyright owners failed to completely optimise the buying experience from you, does that make it okay to download their content?

It's like saying woolies should install self-serve checkouts instead of personal cashiers to make it easier for you to buy your groceries. But because they "utterly failed to take advantage of ways of making it easier for people to get and pay [groceries]", then its okay for consumers to walk out with the groceries without paying.... and then you complain when Woolies calls the police to stop people from doing so, and use security guards to better protect their property.